Skylar Dannan, Morgan Schaffer, Meseret Stevens - FILIPENDULOUS
Filipendulous is an interactive sculpture that represents people staying connected in isolating times. The work comprises six wooden posts connected by cord, each placed six feet apart and decorated to represent different quarantine coping mechanisms in our current social isolation. During the two-week installation, people added messages to the sculpture, encouraging connectedness, community, and friendship. Filipendulous means “hanging precariously, usually by a single thread.” The title references the notecards hanging from the cord, but also brings out the deeper theme of confusion in modern society and in a global pandemic. It can often feel like we are hanging by a thread, but our hope is that small projects like ours can help people, even just a little bit, to feel more connected and grounded, bringing light to this situation through art and community.
Skylar Dannan is an artist, student, and aspiring teacher with a passion for helping people (especially when it comes to mental health) and creating through photography, traditional art, writing, or music (singing). She is an independent thinker who loves to find beauty and emotion in most things: she has a passion for passion. When she’s not on her phone (which is most of the time) she’s usually singing, writing, drawing, taking pictures, hanging out with friends, listening to music (especially My Chemical Romance), daydreaming, or contemplating the universe, its entities, and existence. She hopes, one day, to publish at least a few romance novels, having completed one full novel, many short stories, poems, and separate chapters, and is currently working on another novel. She’s written many songs and has performed one at a vocal performance concert. She enjoys creating art to hang all around her room (alongside her My Chemical Romance posters and flag). She is working on launching an art business “Mo and Sky Create” with her friend Morgan Schaffer. She loves to stay busy with projects hopefully bigger than herself, hoping to touch and inspire people, or even make some sort of impact on the world. Skylar is a cancer, she is obsessed with the fall and adores her cat, Puppy. She is vegan, has pink hair, and aspires to change the world, one creation at a time.
Meseret Stevens is a flutist and a current high school student. She aspires to be a professional flute player. However, if her plans for the classical world of music falls through she would like to study human psychology. She’s always found the way the human brain works fascinating. She loves to spend time talking with people and learning about them. Meseret’s biggest dream in life is to travel the world with her flute playing with famous orchestras around the world. Go big or go home, right?
Morgan Schaffer is a 15-year-old student in Cazenovia High School. She is originally from Syracuse, New York and has many accomplishments including winning an academics award. Morgan is usually writing her own original stories, reading, playing video games with friends, listening to various genres of music, hanging out in the living room with her family, dyeing her hair, or on a small adventure with her partner that involves venturing around Cazenovia. But, if she isn't doing any of that, she's in the kitchen learning a new recipe or doodling on a piece of paper with any random writing utensil. Oftentimes, Mogan is sharing world events on her social media platforms to raise awareness and to get more people talking about them. Morgan is constantly supported by her family, friends, and partner, who encourage her to follow her dreams and pursue any hobbies that have great potential to become something more. Morgan's friends all love to message each other via Snapchat talking about movies, music, actors, actresses, or even discussing different world events. When they can, her friends plan sleepovers, calls, and hangouts, but this project made with her friends is their biggest adventure yet. Being invited to join a project that involves building a sculpture for the Stone Quarry Hill Art Park to represent the hard times that the whole world is facing currently is surely a memory in her high school years that she won't ever forget.